Grass isn’t always greener

High and inside was always my pitch. Since I was never a big kid or an exceptionally strong kid, I would never hit a home run when my pitch came, not even a double. In fact, my standard hit was so consistent that I could point to the spot right over the shortstop’s head like a single-hitting Babe Ruth. It’s not as glamorous, but it got me on the varsity team as a lead off hitter when I was a freshman.

I was fast, so I could usually steal second pretty easily. I had a formula, you see. I would run really fast, and most of the time I could make it standing up; but it’s so much cooler to do a head first slide and get your uniform all dirty – chicks love that shit. So I incorporated it into my base-stealing activities. Yeah, I might have looked a little douchey when my slide was finished before the ball even passed the pitcher’s mound on the way to second, but so what? I looked cool at the end of the game.

I got lots of chances to look cool, too, since my team did exceptionally well the first year I was on it. I was batting .435 (for you non-sports people, that’s really good), and I stole a base pretty much every time I got on board. I was the Willie Mays Hayes of the FSS baseball squad, minus the curse of only hitting pop-ups.

As the season moved on we kept winning and winning, and before we knew it, we made it to the championships. Don’t get too excited. For a small, private Quaker school with about eight teams in our league, it wasn’t that hard. But the team we were playing against was our arch rival, and they always seemed to come up with some sort of miracle to beat us in the last minute.

Due to a broken sewage pipe, we ended up playing on the B-field on the far side of the campus during the season. B-field was notable for two reasons: 1) there was no outfield fence for homers; and 2) it was all grass and no dirt except the pitcher’s mound and the batter’s box. The ‘no fence’ thing would actually work to my advantage if I could hit it out there far enough because, like I said earlier, I was pretty fast. The grass also worked in my favor – I figured it would be more slippery than dirt so I could slide better.

All in all, things were looking up.

I had a tough game. I struck out twice and grounded out once on pitches that I knew I shouldn’t have been swinging at. The team was down three runs, and we were fast approaching the end of the game. At the top of the ninth, we rallied and got two men on with two outs. I was up to bat.

Representing the tying run, I knew that this was the most important at bat of the season. Do or die. Pressure on. Glory or loser. I was feeling it.

I watched the first two pitches go by before I swung. The count was two balls and two strikes with three fouls in a row. The pitcher wound up again. As soon as the ball left his hand, I knew what was coming…my pitch – fast, high and to the inside. My heart tingled as I watched the slow motion pitch come towards me at about the size of a volleyball.

I hit the shit out of the ball. I really cranked it. It went flying over the left fielder’s head so far that if there had been a fence, it would have cleared it by 20 feet or more; but alas, there wasn’t a fence, so it was up to me to make it around. I started trucking it down the line to first, rounding out my run to launch into my second base run with as much power as possible. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw both of my teammates reach home and score. We were down by one run at this point.

As I rounded second, I was shocked to see the ball already in the air heading to third. That outfielder must have had an incredible arm. It was going to be a lot tighter than I thought at first, but with my slide preplanned in my head (I had already considered the green stain on my shirt as opposed to the normal dirt-colored brown stain: bonus chick material), I should have been fine. As I got within ten feet of third, my third base coach was giving me the hands down slide sign. I knew it was going to be really close.

I dove head first onto the grass base path, going into what would be an effortless slide into third, when I realized that physics had a different plan for me. Not only did I not slide an inch, but when I hit the grass, I also stopped so abruptly that my feet actually hit me on the back of the head, knocking my own helmet off.

I heard the third basemen catch the ball in his glove with a loud smack and then tag the ground by the base. He stood up, walked the five feet between me and third base, and tagged me out. It ended the game, the series, and the season for my baseball team.

This is when I decided that soccer was a much better sport for me to play.